


Object Permanence.

by Josaporta



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 10:01:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9814493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josaporta/pseuds/Josaporta
Summary: The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed-- ie, seen, heard, touched, smelled, or sense in any way.





	

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The action or process of observing something or someone carefully or in order to gain information.

“Josh’s” eyes are heavy. There is starlight strewn across the void and though he supposes he doesn’t really have eyelids he knows that one day, at the birth of Life, he will. For now, the Universe is young. The entire mass of it, or the emptiness of it, is comprised of stardust, twinkling and settling into shapes and forms. Atoms flock together. Bonds form on the ionic levels and he feels even himself taking shape. What he is and who he will be are determined when the parts of him that are mostly void split off. He reaches for them, though instead his hands finds something else. He’s traded parts with another something that will be a someone someday. They’ve exchanged pieces of each other now, and Josh feels the new inky part of the new portion of his mass settle into something darker than the rest of him. 

If Josh is starlight and shimmering brightness, this other mass that he’s absorbed is partly stars, though mostly void. They’re opposites, almost, in the way that they’re made. But they’re not quite. There’s something enticing about it, intoxicating as he lets the newer dark parts swallow up other parts of him. 

“Josh” is still mostly stars, but now he’s partly void, too. There’s a quiet moment once the mass has settled again wherein he thinks that, maybe, that was supposed to happen.

There’s something electrifying about the idea of that, and he can already feel the pull that the other being will have on him once they form into something less abstract.

For the time being, “Josh” is a star and the one that stole the small part of him is the black hole that he can feel at the edges of his consciousness, forming far away and where they won’t interfere with Josh’s own progression into Something. He knows that both he and this new being will be part of each other in some way, though he doesn’t know how yet. The thread of whatever it is that he can already feel between them isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop feeling it. 

The first version of “Josh” that exists is a creeping creature stuck to the bottom of the endless sea. He’s on what will one day be called Earth, but he doesn’t know that. All he knows is that his consciousness is still too big for this body, ever expanding and still in search of that thread of connection that he feels as this amphibious body breathes through its skin. He doesn’t know what exactly he is, but he’ll learn later in his life that it will have been something akin to a salamander. He’s brightly colored and attractive, if the way the others react to him is any indication.

Mostly Josh thinks about who among them could be something like what he is-- if any of them have connections to someone like he already does and if they’re searching for them too. 

It’s a physical sensation when the other half that he accidentally gave a piece of himself to comes to life for the first time. He can feel the moment they start to breathe and his own heart rate picks up. He can’t feel where they are, but they’re somewhere on this planet and he just-- He has to _know_ them. Desperately, he needs to. 

What are they like? Can they feel him? What kind of shape did they take? Are they something amphibious like him or are they something like the exoskeletons with wings that flit about? The other salamanders eat them and it sends a sharp pang of a new emotion through him-- fear, he’ll learn in another millenia. He doesn’t know that yet, though. He only knows fight or flight and he knows the sensations that the other piece of him feels. They’re very flighty. It makes him want to puff up his chest whenever they’re afraid-- protective of them already, though he doesn’t know them. 

He knows them by proxy, and he feels it when they die. 

They were probably one of the flying things, because their life is snuffed out quickly after an intense jolt of fear-flight-panic that he’ll learn to figure out the deeper meanings of later. They died afraid and it feels like the sun on his back after he’s fallen asleep above the land, like his skin has dried out and it’s cracking, pain and regret lacing themselves up over his spine and into his musculature. He wishes he could have helped them, wonders if they’d have let him or if they’d have been afraid of him like they had been of whatever had killed them.

The next life that Josh feels them in, he’s something large and hulking. His fangs protrude from his mouth and he roars when he hunts. He’ll never forget, though, how his other half felt the first time they died, and he always aspires to make sure his prey never feels like that. It was softer of him than he realized, but he didn’t want to be the cause of that feeling in someone else on both ends. The sensation of his other part dying had ripped him to pieces and he doesn’t want to do that to anyone else just as much as he wants to keep his prey from feeling like his other half had. 

He wants to protect, not to kill. He only does it because it’s the only way this body can survive. He misses the life of eating vegetation and yearns for blunter teeth.

His other half is something that gets eaten again. 

Josh sees it in his dreams. They’re a landscape of black and white in the vision of his other half, heightened eyesight to combat the dark chill of the night. They’re running from something shaped like Josh-- but not him, god no. He knows that he’d feel it and he’s too careful to let himself make a mistake like that. He knows the shape, though, and he isn’t going to forget it. In his dream, he tries to leap over a fallen tree. He doesn’t know if it’s been downed by one of the massive furry beasts that wander around or by the sharp cracks of lightning that rip down from the sky but the girth of it is too big and instead of leaping over it, his other half trips and lands on his front leg wrong. Their front leg wrong.

He sees it happen through their eyes, feels their fear and sees how the creature shaped like him descends on them and tears into their neck.

It’s over quickly after that, and Josh wakes with a startled roar. 

It always hurts when they die.

They always die.

It takes them both longer to reincarnate the next time. 

Josh is something small this time. The body that he inhabits is made of tiny limbs and pretty wings. He’ll learn later that he’s a moth, and he thinks that this is the first time that the other half of him is something almost akin to what he is. 

His wings are painted in soft pastel colors, something beautiful for him to be. He hopes that he’ll be able to meet the other half of himself like this. There’s just something lovely about this form when he catches sight of it. He’s a beautiful soft green hue-- and now he can see in color which makes everything just that much more wonderful about this place and this planet. He doesn’t know that he wants to ever go back to the void anymore. He’s getting too used to existing like this. 

He’s settled here, happy to search for his other half that keeps somehow escaping him. He knows he’ll find them, though. He can feel it.

They both die before they find each other this time. Josh thinks he might die first, actually, and he’s not used to that. It’s unfortunate that his other half always seems to get snuffed out before he can find them, and it makes him think that maybe it’s because of the way they’re made. 

Josh wishes he had poured more starlight into them when he’d been able to-- taken up more of their void to keep them safe from it. 

After that, Josh is the one that takes a long time to reincarnate. At least, longer than he usually does. There’s this strange tendency that he has where he just filters through his life cycles without really noting them heavily. The only times he pays attention to the cycles are when he’s focused on his other half, how they cycle through their lives. He’s so attuned to them that sometimes he completely misses what happens in his own cycle and it’s over before he knows it.

Josh had never taken long to reincarnate, his new life cycles come and go just as quickly as they had at the beginning. Though, he thinks maybe he just doesn’t pay attention because it takes the other half of him so long to. The lifetimes where they don’t exist seem to drag on, but if he’s being honest with himself then he doesn’t really pay attention to them either. It’s like a long awakening that he can’t quite get himself to rise from, too tired to open his eyes fully to the world until he just goes back to sleep instead. 

He still feels it. There’s a deeper link between them that he can’t deny. A tether exists between them that keeps hi attention on it all the time. It’s unmistakable and undeniable and he never wants to forget the sensation of knowing them like this.

He wonders a lot of the time if they feel it too, or if he only feels it because of all the starlight he’s made out of. Maybe they’re too much of the void to feel it, but he hopes not. He wants them to feel him too. He wants to be known by them. 

The next lifetime that he cycles through is something called a ‘dog’. His other half reincarnates as something called a ‘rabbit’. He lives with ‘humans’ and other dogs. Their home is in the woods, tucked away and surrounded by plenty of other people that stroke their fingers over his ears and down his spine. It’s something and familial. He loves the feeling of it, and he hopes that his other half is feeling something just as soft when he finally finds them.

He learns what love is, during this lifetime. He feels love for the family that takes care of him and he feels love for the other half that he’s never met.

The humans are hunters, though, and Josh isn’t comfortable with having to chase down little animals. It makes him think of all the times that his other half was being chased by something only to die. He hangs back from the pack of other dogs, doesn’t follow after the small animals.

He dreams of their death again this time. They’re a little rabbit, hunted by a pack of dogs.

He doesn’t hunt with the pack again at all after that.

Josh has been alive and died so many times that he can’t count anymore. He settles into the skin and bones of his lives more now, they're almost comfortable every time he passes through one. He makes sure that he’s always got a constant notion of his other half in his mind when he’s breathing. When he’s just out in the atmosphere, as something that does and doesn’t exist, it’s all that he focuses on. 

There’s just something comforting about having that link. It grounds him.

It’s the first time that he reincarnates as a human that he can really feel their presence. It blankets him and he’s never felt this close to it. The excitement lurks behind his teeth, sharp grins as he basks in the feeling of being able to sense them so near. He’s always been able to feel them and it’s been such a constant of knowing without knowing them that he doesn’t know how he’ll react if he does finally meet them. It builds up in his chest like a stream of bubbles that pop against his ribs in the most excited way.

He can’t tell exactly where they are, though, and it grates on him in the strangest way. He’s never been this close to them before so instead of feeling like they’re eons away it feels like they’re everywhere. They’re wisping through the air on a breeze and Josh thinks maybe if he breathes deep enough he could feel them in his lungs. He closes his eyes and see flowers behind his eyelids and he thinks that maybe his other half is looking at them, he skims his fingers over themselves-- the pads of his own are rough in this lifetime. He plays an instrument, drums, and it matches the way his heartbeat kicks up when he feels like he could almost reach out and touch them. 

Josh goes through bands. He hears soft mumbles in his head and then screaming. He thinks that his other half must be in a band, or looking for one, so he throws himself into the music. It becomes his highest passion and he tries to surround himself with it so that he’ll find them. 

He gets invited to a small concert in someone’s backyard by one of his friends. He’s working at a music store, his hair a mess and a metal ring through his lip. His friend invites him to his band’s show and Josh knows-- can feel it so deep in his bones that they resonate, vibrating like there’s something under his skin. He knows this is where he’ll find them. 

He’s right. The show is a small boy his age, screaming at a microphone and slamming down keys on a piano. His heart races faster than it ever has before and he swears he feels like he’s on fire. He feels like it’s the Beginning again and he’s just formed. He feels the dark void in him swell with recognition and he sees the starlight gleaming off of-- Tyler. His name is Tyler. Josh learns it when he steps off the stage and their mutual friend introduces them. Josh has never been so happy to meet someone and he knows, too, that they have to stay together. He knows that he’s going to give Tyler his number and he wonders if Tyler can feel it too. 

He’s always wondered if his other half could feel him, but he’s too afraid of the answer to find out, really. He just needs to know and it etches itself so deep into him that he feels the very first lances of fear from like when he was in his first life on this planet. From Tyler’s words on stage, he knows that the other remembers that first fear-- and the ones afterward. 

“Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit,” he’d said. Josh’s skin had prickled when the words poured out of his mouth on stage. 

He knows that Tyler remembers everything from before, can feel it in the way he breathes.

“I’m Josh,” he says instead of everything else that wants to come spilling out. It feels like he’s overflowing with emotion as he stands before the little bit of void that had taken a piece of his starlight. They’d exchanged parts of each other and his heart had thudded just like it is now. He’s so excited and nervous that he thinks he might puke. 

“Tyler,” they say. Josh can’t quite believe they’ve finally met and he shakes Tyler’s hand. They both linger, unwilling to let go because he wants to keep him forever now. There’s such a jarring way that the universe seems like it’s come back together that he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. Then Tyler is talking and Josh isn’t doing anything but smiling and listening. He only wants to hear him talk for the rest of the night about everything and nothing, anything. His heart swells in his chest and he smiles the hardest he ever has when they exchange phone numbers at the end of the night. Josh tugs him in for a hug and delights in the way Tyler’s cheeks are tinted pink when he pulls away-- because he can feel that too. Inside his chest, he feels it flutter like it’s his own emotion, but he knows that it isn’t quite his, even if he feels the same way. 

They talk constantly. It’s late night phone calls that have them both up way past when they should be, talking to each other excitedly and animatedly. They talk about their dreams and their aspirations-- in this life at least. They both want to go into music. Josh has for a while, but Tyler solidified it in him. He’s never had a plan B, but now this is the only thing he even wants enough in life to hang onto it.

They talk from the time they wake up until one of them falls asleep, and they always wake to more messages from the other because of it. Josh tries to never fall asleep on Tyler because he knows that the night time isn’t the best for him. Josh knows it’s because of the traces of void that still like at the insides of his mind, but he’s still too afraid to ask Tyler if he knows that, if he can feel the void and the starlight and what and who they are, if he remembers anything they’ve been.

Josh quits his band and four months later he quits his job to be with Tyler. They’re going to do music together and he’s going to make it work if it’s the last thing he does. 

He knows it won’t be, though, because now he’s going to have had Tyler and he’s not letting him go in this lifetime or the next. 

Tyler glows when they’re together and Josh can see it like a halo circling him, bathed in starlight.

If Josh blinks again, Tyler will be gone. Their lifespan is something that always seems to go out quickly. He knows that they won’t be in these bodies forever so he’s trying to make it as memorable as possible. He doesn’t want to blink Tyler away again, doesn’t want them to lose track of each other and not be able to find themselves for another thousand years. He wants to keep them together forever now. He doesn’t want to lose him. 

He wants him forever.

This time he clings to him. There’s no need for him to wonder about how his other half is feeling in life or if he’s happy because Josh is there to let him confide in him whenever he needs it. Every moment he feels Tyler droop into something dark, Josh is there to lift him back up. He doesn’t let the darkness of the void that he still feels in both of them-- especially Tyler-- consume either of them. There’s a quiet desperation that hides the deeper meaning of it, and he relishes in being able to keep it at bay.

They are together, though Josh knows that they have to act as humans do. He still doesn’t know if Tyler remembers anything from their pasts but he’s more than willing to wait and find out.

He’s waited long enough already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will it have a happy ending? Probably but knowing me who really knows


End file.
